GLR July-August 2025

Angel began expressing related con cerns about the increasing number of trans people in the early 2020s. This crescendoed when he collaborated with the trans-man-led anti-transgender group Gender Dysphoria Alliance Canada on its notorious “Trans Men Fight Back” statement in 2021. The conspiracy-laden declaration claimed a group of queer trans women are coercing people into trans identity for sexual pleas ure and pharmaceutical company profits. “Children are being taught a false narrative in the media and in public schools, which is confusing them … in order to protect the egos, fantasies and capitalist desires of [trans women],” they wrote. Their account of trans politics, predictably, was not well received, and the five white, right-wing trans men quickly took down the statement. In a period of a few years, Angel went

gies, ranging from endorsing mass depor tations to advocating cannabis legalization. Over time, Angel has identified as a De mocrat, liberal, libertarian, Trump sup porter, and Republican, but none of these labels neatly describes his ideology.

Most far-right transgender people I in terviewed did not identify with the far right itself, no matter how fascistic their viewpoints. A few (correctly) identified as neo-Nazis, alt-right, or white nationalists. But the majority, including those with overtly white supremacist views, believed they were moderate. Angel went even fur ther: “I’m just an actual old-school liberal at heart,” he explained in 2022. Interest ingly, he often repeats the mantra “the right has become the center,” which embodies his political self-perception. After feeling excluded from the left, members of the multicultural far right often justify their beliefs by claiming that the right is the new moderate. Trans identification with right-wing politics often comes with a shift in describing one’s own gender identity. Angel, like many other far-right trans people, identifies as transsexual, not trans gender. Thus he differentiates himself from leftists and “fake” (his word) trans people, by which he means those who identify as trans for political purposes or do not have gender dysphoria or a desire to transition medically. “Now we have trans with no gen der dysphoria, no need for mental health care, self ID, affirmation therapy. … That says to me on some level, some form of indoc trination,” he explained to Fox News in 2022. Angel’s amorphous self-descriptors helped to rationalize his transition to the right wing commentators on Fox. His self-descriptions meant he could align himself with the group most likely to harm him, protecting himself at the expense of others. Angel’s identities mapped directly onto his descent into right wing politics. In 2010, he identified simply as a man. “For me, I am a man and that’s what I’m trying to say to the world—my genitals do not define me,” he told The Guardian . Until the late 2010s, he typically identified as a trans man, titling his best known “docu-porn” series Sexing the Transman XXX (released from 2010 to 2015). He then shifted his rhetoric, telling Andrew

Caitlyn Jenner, March, 2024. AP/Stefan Jeremiah.

from being an influential progressive to one of the world’s most vocal right-wing transgender celebrities. His rhetoric supports the political right’s “divide-and-conquer” strategy through the application of respectability politics, misogyny, and exclusion. In return, he has received funding, gained social influence, and even become an “Outspoken Ambassador” for the Log Cabin Re publicans. These key events provide ample grounding to under stand why he began to align himself with right-wing ideals, but this was only the first part of his political transformation. I DENTIFICATION A NGEL DID NOT COLLABORATE with right-wing groups until after the Natalie Wynn video controversy, which led to the most sig nificant turn in his public persona. He soon began working with conservative media figures such as Andrew Sullivan, though not identifying himself with the right explicitly. At the same time, his self-descriptions changed to match his newfound community. Generally speaking, identification is not only a political process for most trans people on the right, but also a transformation in how one describes and actualizes their gender identity. Angel’s views are wide-ranging and not always aligned with the right, often placing him in a more liberal position than the company he keeps. His positions form a scatterplot of ideolo

Sullivan in 2021: “We are not men. We are trans men. We are not women. We are trans women.” By 2023, he had redefined himself again: “I am not a man, I am a transsexual man. … My biology never changed.” This appeared to package his narrative in accordance with the recent right-wing slogan “human beings can’t change sex.” In 2024, his self-description mutated into “a biological female who was diagnosed with dysphoria.” His self identification neatly aligns with the un raveling of transgender rights in the U.S. Angel’s transformation in identity may seem odd, but gender identity, like politics, is never fixed. Trans people are

Song of Sappho

My love for you is a ship without sails, knowing no harbor, sailing from nowhere to nowhere, a game lost cleanly, a Greek tragedy on the sand of the amphitheater, where you were the only one alive among dead decorations. My love is Sappho’s elegies, strings, a storyteller of valleys and sorrows. About how in this absolute world of evil the silence is stronger than the cry of dry grass, and no poison is more deadly, than an arrow flying into the void.

A NZHELINA P OLONSKAYA Translated by Andrew Wachtel

TheG & LR

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